How-To Repair A Samsung Blu-ray Player
I purchased my Samsung BD-P1590/XAA from woot.com back in March or April I think, and like a few other things from woot it didn’t work. I’m usually pretty good about cashing in on the 90 day warranty, but I had an issue with samsung customer service and getting the shipping info. Anyhow I let the warranty slip. Being an avid do-it-yourselfer, I decided to dedicate some time to a repair attempt; here is the step by step.
1. Remove the cover. Start with the 5 screws on the metal cover and remove
2. Remove the face panel. Then pry the 8 or so plastic clips from the front cover and remove the front cover/display panel. (Two of the plastic clips are smaller and on opposite sides on the top of the disc drive, you shouldn’t have to remove the ribbon cable)
3. Lift the disc drive. Remove the 4 chrome screws from the bottom of the disc drive and pry the tape off the chassis. Lift the disc drive up and prop it up against the chassis face. You shouldn’t have to remove the ribbon cables. Lifting the drive out of the chassis is only so you can open the disc drive.
4. Open the disc drive. Remove the 4 black screws from the top cover of the disc drive and lift the cover off. Pry the blue magnet out of the top cover so you can easily test the drive.
5. Adjust the lasers! Im not really sure how much insight I can provide here as to the right way to accomplish this. I’ve done this before with my PS2 so I’m basically applying the same pricipal. You will see 3 tiny screw heads on the right side of the disc drive board. Fiddle with those. For me all I had to do was turn each of them 1/2 turn counter clockwise and everything worked! Be sure to test DVD’s, Blu-rays, and if you wish DVD-R(W) before you close everything back up.
6. Put it all back together and pat yourself on the back.
X
I can’t believe it has taken me so long find out about ssh -X
Basically all this time that I have been using VNC to accomplish everything remote that would be nice to have a gui in.
Well now I just ssh -X dude@system
and run some pimp command like “VirtualBox &”
BLIGABLAM!
Sometimes it’s good to feel like a newb all over again.


Behold the dPad!
So I got the chance to play with an iPad for a few minutes, nothing really exiting to speak of other than it made a hell of a good ebook reader. A $500 ebook reader is a little much so I thought maybe I can make something work for less. This is an old Dell D600 that I’ve had laying around without a purpose. I tore it apart this morning to see how difficult it would be to turn the screen around. As it turns out, it’s easy as pie! The hinges are mostly symmetric and the one and only cable connecting the panel to the board it long enough to be turned around. So about 10 minutes of screw turning and some screen rotation in software and I now have one damn good ebook reader. It it heavy and I don’t think I’ll ever take it out of the house but the price is definitely right.
Borg
So my latest project is a low overhead command and control bot for the masses. It’s not meant to be hidden or anything. More like open source remote administration framework. Anyway I’m excited.
When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical
–OMGF this is the best quote ever for apple products and for any product that people buy and don’t know why!!! “I am too stupid to understand computers so it’s magic!” HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA











